Las Vegas Solitaire
How to play Las Vegas Solitaire
Klondike is a one-deck solitaire game with seven tableau columns of mostly face-down cards, a stock turned onto a waste pile, and four foundations built up by suit from Ace to King.
Klondike played for a dollar balance: the deal costs $52, each card on a foundation pays $5, and the stock is turned once, one card at a time.
About Las Vegas Solitaire
Las Vegas Solitaire deals and plays exactly like Klondike, turning the stock one card at a time, but you go through the stock only once and the score is a balance in dollars.
Each deal starts at -$52, and every card on a foundation pays $5, so all 52 cards up leave you $208 ahead. Ten cards on the foundations still leave you $2 down, and the eleventh puts you $3 up. Taking a card back off a foundation gives back its $5, and Undo puts the balance back with the board. There is no time bonus, and the dollars are only a score.
Switch on Cumulative score in Settings to carry the balance from one deal to the next. Every deal you make a move in then adds its result to a running total, kept only in this browser, and Settings can reset it to zero.
With a single pass, a waste card you leave behind stays covered until every card above it is played. Look at what the next card could free before you turn it. There is no Winnable switch: the solver proves too few of these boards to find one while you wait.
Because the balance is counted from the foundations alone, nothing you do in the tableau costs money. Moving a card down from a foundation to free a column takes $5 off, and sending it home again puts the $5 back, so a card borrowed that way is free in the end.
In the time a new deal is given, the game's solver proved only 3 of 200 single-pass deals winnable, so every deal here is an ordinary shuffle. A small marker at the foot of the stock reads 1/1 for the one pass, and once the stock is empty it shows no turn-back arrow. There is no daily Las Vegas board.
The goal of Klondike
Move all 52 cards onto the four foundations, one for each suit, building each from Ace up to King.
How to set up Klondike
One deck is dealt into seven tableau columns holding one to seven cards, with only the last card of each column face up. The remaining 24 cards form the stock.
Klondike rules
In the tableau, build down in alternating red and black: a red Seven goes on a black Eight. You can move a face-up card together with all the cards on top of it. Only a King, or a run headed by a King, can fill an empty column.
When a move uncovers a face-down card, it turns face up. Turn cards from the stock onto the waste; the top waste card can go to the tableau or a foundation. Once the stock is empty, the waste turns back into the stock: as often as you like in Klondike and Draw Three, twice in Las Vegas Solitaire Turn 3, and never in Las Vegas Solitaire. A card on a foundation may also come back down to the tableau.
Drag a card or a run to move it, or click it to send it to its best legal place: a foundation if one takes it, otherwise a tableau column. With Autoplay switched off in Settings, a click does nothing and only a drag moves cards.
The full Klondike guide, with strategy tips and common questions